I recently finished
listening to the audiobook, and now understand why everyone’s been
recommending it to me. It’s laugh-out-loud funny (you might want to avoid
listening to it on your daily commute) – but also frequently shocking,
occasionally upsetting and has a political message. Adam is now a comedy
writer, script editor and performer – and it shows. This is Going to Hurt
was a comedy show before it was a book.

But before all that, Adam was a
doctor. The memoir documents his six years as a junior doctor between 2004
and 2010. Once he no longer needed to keep his medical paperwork, he began
clearing it out – but kept his ‘reflective practice’ notes – which form the
basis of the book.

There was some discussion at this
year’s audiobook-heavy Quantum Conference about when it makes sense for an
author to read their own work. Memoir was highlighted as an example of where
this can work well, with the right author. Adam is one of those authors. His
delivery – even (especially) the footnotes – enhances the experience.

We had a flavour if this during the
session, when Adam read a couple of extracts. To avoid spoilers, I shall just
call these ‘Kinder Surprise’ (which was received with much hilarity); and
‘Upsetting Patient Diagnosis’ (which wasn’t).

There is considerably more light
than shade in the book. Nonetheless, I arrived at the Book Fair the previous
day a bit discombobulated, as I’d been listening to it on my way in and had
just got to the ‘…and that’s why I’m no longer a doctor’ part. The ‘…that’s
why there are no more jokes in this book’ part.

Adam was spotted by a publisher at
the Edinburgh Fringe, when This is Going to Hurt
was still s a show. Chris Doyle saw it in 2016. He says: “For the first 55
minutes the audience laughed – and then this thing happened at the end, and
I’ve never seen such a dramatic reversal.” His colleague Francesca Main had
already seen show earlier in year and wanted to turn it into a book. Yet Adam
initially left the serious ending out of the show in previews. People enjoyed
it, but he had some feedback that it didn’t really have an ending. “It did,
but I didn’t want to talk about it,” says Adam. “Six or seven years had
elapsed, and I had never really talked about it. The first time my parents
knew about why I left medicine was when they read in it hardback.”

It has an ending now. It gets
serious, campaigning even – and ends with an open letter to the Health
Secretary (who, at the time of writing, is still Jeremy Hunt). The book lures
you in with the comedy – then hits you with: ‘right, now I’ve got your
attention, THIS is what I actually want to say.’

I wouldn’t have published the book if I didn’t want to affect a
bit of change.
– Adam Kay

Adam was initially motivated to
write a memoir by the treatment of junior doctors in the UK. They were coming
under fire from politicians at the time – being accused of being greedy and
in it for the money. Anyone who has read the book cannot possibly believe
that characterisation of junior doctors – and that’s the point. Adam may not
be able to influence politicians but, by better informing the public, they
are less likely to swallow government propaganda. He thought that: “If people
knew what [being a junior doctor]meant, hour by hour, no one in their right
mind would agree with what they’re being fed by politicians.” He adds: “I
wouldn’t have published the book if I didn’t want to affect a bit of change.”

What is a memoir? And
what is a ‘memoir that matters’?

These elements – an immersive memoir
with a message, which is communicated with a lightness of touch and freedom
of form – is part of a growing trend. They are books that are entertaining,
emotional and informative, written by someone who’s done something
extraordinary and has something to say about it – and they do something to
affect change in society. This is a trend that you need to be aware of if you
want to write a memoir.

Chris Doyle opened the session by
asking each panellist to name a memoir that matters to them. Their choices
were:

Rosamund de la Hey: Educated
by Tara Westover. It’s a combination of personal story/journey, beautifully
written, with enormous heart. In other hands it could have been a misery
memoir – in which case I wouldn’t have been interested. It’s the quality of
the writing and the context that caught my attention. Tara was brought up in
an extreme Mormon family in Idaho – and ended up with doctorate from
Cambridge. As bookseller, it’s very easy to get it across to customers. It’s
a dream sell, like Adam’s. As an ex-publicist, I think it’s easier to market
non-fiction than fiction – because you have more ‘hooks’.

It’s easier to market non-fiction than fiction – because you
have more ‘hooks’.
– Rosamund de la Hey

Cathryn Summerhayes: My Mad Dad: The Diary
of an Unravelling Mind by Robyn Hollingworth. It’s a
personal diary by young woman who had the start of very good fashion career
in London when she got a call to say father had been diagnosed with
Alzheimer’s. She decided to move back and become a carer. There are lots of
ups – but there’s also the tragedy of realising you’re losing the person who
raised you. It matters because our understanding of mental health –
depression, degenerative illnesses – is currently in the spotlight. It’s a
problem for the NHS and our ageing population.

Adam Kay: At the moment I’m reading lot of memoirs that DON’T matter –
people keep sending them in – and not everyone has an interesting story. But
one I can’t stop thinking about is Cathy Rentznbrink’s The Last Act of Love
– an extraordinary story about her brother who’s involved in a traffic
accident and is left in a ‘persistent vegetative state’. On the face of it’s
a harrowing misery memoir – but it’s told with an extraordinary lightness,
and it’s funny. It stuck with me.

All of these fit Chris Dolye’s two
key criteria that define a memoir:

1.Fluid in form. A memoir is not the cradle-to-grave account you might expect in
an autobiography or biography. It’s more a focused slice of life. A memoir
can be fluid in form, about a small area, attached to a particular topic. It
moves around more. For example, Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk
is about grief – getting over the death of her father by training of a
goshawk – but it is also interspersed with a biography of T.H. White.

2.Written by
extraordinary ordinary people. People who write a memoir are not celebrities or famous
people. They are extraordinary ordinary people. They’re doing something
really amazing but not somebody who already has an audience, such as a
world-renowned actor. In the case of The Secret
Barrister, even the editor doesn’t know who the writer is. What maters in
account of daily life in court.

Cathryn Summerhayes agreed that
memoir used to be more autobiographical, but is now more fluid. It has
changed. Rosamund de la Hey cited Maggie O’Farrell’s I Am, I Am, I Am:
Seventeen Brushes With Death as something
with a very fragmentary structure – but the form gives license for that to
work.

Extraordinary ordinary people is key
to the total immediacy of the genre. We may think we know about being a
doctor, a barrister or a carer – but a memoir gives the opportunity for
somebody to explain that world to you from the inside.

The real difference, according to
Doyle, is that this new genre is about having something to say. It’s all well
and good that it gives an insight into world of junior doctor, barrister etc.
– but it’s more than just prying in and vicariously seeing what someone else
done. It’s taking us into a world but seeking some kind of change – which can
be small-scale human-to-human change, or more societal change. Adam Kay’s is
a perfect example – complete with a letter to Jeremy Hunt. Two things are
key:

§No sugar-coating. In This is Going to Hurt,
we get the full blood, sweat and tears – among other bolidy fluids – and see
things playing out in real time, such as Adam waking up on Christmas morning
having fallen asleep in his car. In My Mad Dad
we see Robyn not being able to communicate with her father that mother is
dying too.

“It’s really immediate, in your
face,” says Summerhayes. “By not sugar-coating it we’re all becoming
activists because it motivates us to want to see change.” We’re being asked:
Do you realise how bad it is for junior doctors? Do you realise how bad the
legal system is?” Doyle agrees: “That openness, opening of the self, emotional
honesty, is new.”

Overcoming the
resistance to write a memoir

Adam felt comfortable on stage,
telling 150 people a night what he thought of Jeremy Hunt – but initially
resisted the invitation to write a memoir. He had something to say – but
didn’t feel he was able to say it. “I’m not the sort of person who writes a
book,” he says. “I’d read lots of books about how to write a book – and they
all said you have to read lots and lots of books. I don’t, so I felt
unqualified. It took a long time to get over that.”

I’m sure this is an anxiety that
many of us have – but Adam’s experience is a lesson in going your own way and
telling your own story in the way you want to. It helps that he can write, of
course. “These opportunities don’t come along often as an agent,” says
Summerhayes. “What sets it apart from many submissions is he’s an incredibly
good writer. And I’m sucker for diaries.”

Changing form from stage show to
book had it’s challenges. The structure is different in the book to the stage
show, as it explains the different roles and levels of seniority – house
officer, senior house office, registrar, consultant. There is also an
opportunity to explain in more detail than a 70-minute show allows, through
the use of footnotes – which are done especialy well. And people want to know
the detail. Adam credits his agent with having a huge input in the creative
process from first to final draft. “The outtakes were spectacular!” she says.

If you want to write a memoir, you
need to get over these anxieties – but it clearly helps having a supportive,
creative team around you.

Marketing a memoir

Memoir offers a greater than usual
opportunity to involve you as an author – because it is about your own life.
You are the ‘product’ as much as your book. Adam spoke at a dinner after the
Scottish Booksellers Association conference. This was a slot of only three
minutes – but the format suited the book well. “From that moment it became a
chain reaction,” says de la Hey. “As a bookseller we’re given hundreds of
proofs, and we simply can’t read them all. To get ‘cut through’ is key.”

Adam also did a ton of work to
promote the book. It helps that he had a show before the book – and he’s been
the length and breadth of country twice over – and treats every event with
same respect. As an author, you have to work hard at getting the word out
about your book, including using social media. Adam is “flying the flag
because he has a cause,” says Summerhayes. “I didn’t want to be the reason
the book failed!” says Adam.

That ’cause’ is what should make
marketing a ‘memoir that matters’ easier than some other books, though. It’s
genuine. “It’s not every author who can hold their book up with pride and say
‘this is my story and this is why I wrote it'” says Summerhayes. It’s why
there’s been a diminishing in sales of ghosted memoirs. They just don’t feel
authentic – and authenticity is what readers want.

What is the future of
memoir?

A couple of questions from the
audience touched on the future of memoir.

Q: You said memoirs are becoming more
fluid – how do you see them changing more?

Chris Doyle: From an editorial point of view, it’s the freedom of it – you
can almost do anything you like. For example Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk
would sound like a mess in most editorial meetings – but it’s extraordinary.
The more of these books that succeed in different ways gives us more
confidence. The only criteria is: can the writer pull it off?Cathryn Summerhayes:
Beware of the trend to over-share on social media. A lot of these books are
100 pages that have enormous impact. The biggest fear when reading
submissions is: are they salacious? Are they overplaying terrible things?
It’s the same with literary fiction – you don’t want it to be over-written.

The only criteria is: can the writer pull it off?
– Chris Doyle, Picador

Q. With the rise of
#TimesUp and #MeToo, are you expecting to see more survivor stories – such as
Helen Walmsley Johnson’s coercive control memoir Look What You made Me
Do – and does that bring with it another raft of potential legal
issues?

Cathryn Summerhayes: I’m seeing a ton of that in submissions. I have to think about
what’s going to work in a crowded market. There might be 30 titles in the
window, all of which I want to read; if there’s another 50, will I want to
read them too? I’ve been offered a lot of medical memoirs – but have only
published two, and one of those was by a vet. I need to know: why are they
telling them? Have they enough of a reach to be important to a bigger, more
general readership? It has to be something unique. Pubishers are publishing
fewer books – and booksellers are selling fewer books.Rosamund de la Hay:
There’s finite shelf space, so the selection process is quite brutal. It’s
usually about the quality of writing, combined with the story. It may sound
obvious, but it’s true.Chris Doyle:
From a legal point of view, as a publisher you’re not trying to silence
anyone’s story – but if it goes wrong you could be on the line for a lot of
money; so you have to walk the line between freedom of expression and
corporate responsibility.

It’s about the quality of writing, combined with the story.– Rosamund de la Hay, President of the BA

As with any genre, it doesn’t pay to
‘write to market’. All you can do as a writer is write what you want to
write, write it as well as you can – and hope that someone else wants to read
it. Authenticity is key, and your unique voice is what people want. But this
new trend, this sub-genre of ‘memoirs that matter’, means that we have
greater freedom than ever to tell our own stories in our own way. The only
requirement is having something to say – and being able to say it well
enough.

Six ways to write a
memoir that matters

Here are the takeaways I got from
the session, which you can apply to your own memoir writing:

1.Have something to say. You don’t have to be famous to write a
memoir. You just have to have something to say.

2.Choose an angle. Don’t tell us your
whole life story from cradle to grave – this isn’t autobiography. Choose an
angle, a ‘slice of life’, a topic, an issue.

3.Get creative. Be playful with form.
Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt
is mostly in the form of a diary. Nina Stibbe’s Love, Nina
is in the form of letters home to her sister. Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk
is a mashup of overcoming grief through falconry in the present, flashbacks
to childhood in the past – and a biography of T.H. White. One of the most
unusual memoirs in terms of structure in recent years – but it totally works,
is beautifully written – and it won major awards.

4.Keep it light. The misery memoir boom
is over – and is actually off-putting to many agents and publishers
now. Don’t hold back – but don’t over-share or over-write either. Get to
the emotional honesty of what you want to say – but don’t overplay terrible
events to be sensational or salacious for the sake of it. Humour and a
lightness of touch are well-received – and this is possible even with the
darkest of subjects – such as Cathy Rentzenbrink’s The Last Act of Love.

5.Be aware of legal
issues – but not yet. There’s a hilarious legal disclaimer at the
start of Adam’s book – but it obviously required a legal read (then again,
who is going to admit to being Kinder Suprise Woman?) However, don’t worry
too much about legal issues during the creative writing process. Write what
you want to write, then consider any legal issues that it might throw up, and
seek advice. (This was discussed at a separate session at the London Book
Fair.)

6.Get out there. As authors, we all
have to get involved with the promotion of our books these days. If you’re
writing memoir, you surely have an advantage: you have a strong belief in
your book (think of the reasons you’re writing a memoir in the first place);
and you are the product as much as your book. This can be daunting: you may
feel you’re being judged not just on your writing but on your life! But it
gives you a unique opportunity to connect with your readers.

About Me

I am a writer who is looking to expand on the articles, poems, short stories and reviews I have had published and the plays and radio plays I have had performed. I am actively seeking a position in the creative industry whilst continuing to write novels, plays, poems and scripts.